The human male possesses the Italian designer faucet of penises. They’re pretty big, the biggest of any primate’s relative to body size. And they’re showy, too, right out there, front and center on our upright bodies (i.e., they don’t retract), as if they were meant to be seen as part of the décor. Why?

“Penis size does affect attractiveness,” lead author Brian Mautz, a University of Ottawa post-doctoral researcher said in an NBCNews.com interview.

Past research has seemed to indicate that women, as a group, are drawn to larger male members. But those results have been disputed as sexist, or scientifically flawed, or both.

So Mautz and his team, working at the Australian National University, designed an experiment in hopes of settling the controversy. They created 49 unique, computer-generated, nude, life-sized male figures. Each figure varied in three traits: height, shoulder-hip ratio and flaccid penis size.

The researchers then displayed all the figures to 105 Australian women with an average age of 26. The women, who were not told which traits varied, were asked to rate the attractiveness of the figures as sexual partners on a scale of 1-7. The women were alone in the room and their responses were anonymous.

As past studies have shown, women prefer tall men with broad shoulders and narrow hips, like an Olympic swimmer. But when Mautz controlled for those variables, it turned out that penis size (overall length and girth) was about as important as stature.

“As you increase penis size, the amount of attractiveness scores gets bigger” in a linear fashion, he explained, until 7.6 centimeters, or 3 inches. After three inches, attractiveness still increased, but in smaller increments.

Not only were the ratings higher, but the women also spent more time gazing at the generously endowed figures, a sign they preferred looking at them as opposed to figures with smaller penises.

Women with a greater body mass index held stronger preferences for big penises. And size was most critical in tall men, perhaps, Mautz speculated, because “a taller guy must have a disproportionately larger penis to sort of make it clear” he’s endowed.

Some have argued that penis size fretting is driven by a body-obsessed culture and porn saturation. But according to Stuart Brody, a researcher at the University of the West of Scotland who’s conducted studies on orgasm, penis size and relationship satisfaction, “some erotica might reflect fads, but there is a potent evolutionary motivation” at work, too.

That’s what interested Mautz, who studies mate-choice, or why we choose one individual over another. Women make mate choices based partly on evolutionarily constructed fitness preferences and may be using penis size as a clue, Brody said. “The results of the PNAS study (and our own penis size studies) are consistent with a mate-choice perspective.”

But a clue to what? Women may be looking for orgasms, which, in turn, Mautz suggested, may serve a pair-bonding function. In the recent book, The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction(which I co-authored), Emory University neuroscientist Larry Young argues that the big human penis evolved into a tool meant to stimulate both the vagina and cervix as a way trigger the release of oxytocin in a woman’s brain, activating bonding circuits. Such bonds provide a survival advantage to offspring.

Or as Mautz puts it in his paper, “Our results support the hypothesis that female mate choice could have driven the evolution of larger penises in humans.”

Of course, this is the 21st century. Most men wear pants – or at the very least, kilts. Mautz was quick to soothe men by saying that his study did not include other proven mate choice factors like money, intelligence, hair or whether a guy drives a 1997 Chevy Astro.

15 Comments

ashadowfallsApril 9, 2013 @ 4:50 pm

Fuckin marvellous. . .somethin else to worry about!!!

Lancs LassApril 9, 2013 @ 9:25 pm

i want thrilling not killing !…lol

dogmanApril 10, 2013 @ 3:04 pm

Well, i’m never gonna plough fields with it, but I’ve gotten by with what I’ve got! I put a lot of that down to my run up! My dismount isn’t always what it could be, but be fair ladies, by then I was usually knackered! Not for a bloke to say if he’s well endowed, that’s up to the ladies, and as we know they do talk!

dogmanApril 10, 2013 @ 3:18 pm

Don’t worry lads, women appreciate a tryer, so if you go down more often than Gareth Bale, you’ll be fine! You may may end up saying those three words that some women seem to want to hear, you know the ones…….I CAN’T BREATHE!

tomApril 10, 2013 @ 6:55 pm

“Women with a greater body mass index held stronger preferences for big penises”

i.e. fat birds !

dogmanApril 11, 2013 @ 12:15 am

Yes Tom, I noticed that too! Being serious for once, if people are shown naked pictures of the opposite sex (after all we’re not politicians/royals) it is to be expected that people gaze longer at the most physically impressive pictures. That doesn’t give them the right to expect prospective partners to be perfect though and you would expect the size of a man’s endowment to be less than obvious until you actually bump uglies! I’ve heard women comment about the size of a streaker and you have to wonder how inexperienced they are to not know the difference there can be between Southampton and Northampton. I have probably just outed myself as a grower not a shower, lol. Them that count know the truth or maybe I’ve just been lucky!

carlApril 11, 2013 @ 8:52 am

Two inches of tongue does a better job than ten of penis :- so how does that work then ?

A tool is only as good as the craftsman handling it.

alex reddyApril 11, 2013 @ 12:50 am

fucking laughed my tits off chris lmfao

ashadowfallsApril 11, 2013 @ 10:34 am

So Carl, you say 2″ of tongue is as good as 10″ of dong.
Think i’m short tongued too!!
Lets face it i’m doomed!!
G.s.o.h gets me by tho. . . lets face it, it has too!

carlApril 11, 2013 @ 10:52 am

Love it lol 🙂

dogmanApril 11, 2013 @ 4:19 pm

You know your in trouble if you hear an echo! Trying to fill one like a wizard’s sleeve or a bill poster’s bucket ain’t gonna be easy, no matter how big you are!

ashadowfallsApril 11, 2013 @ 5:04 pm

. . .or a hippo’s yawn!

LindaApril 12, 2013 @ 12:18 am

Could it be we like big dicks the same way men like big boobs! Equality innit tho’.

RhedaeJune 20, 2013 @ 1:19 pm

With a dick that big Chris I·m surprised you haven·t got some ink on that beauty! you fit all the fucking art work in Le Louvre on that mamouth! thanks for the laugh Chris!

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